Wireless communications systems are well-known in the art. A problem common to many wireless communication systems is how to process a continuous stream of requests for communication given only a limited number of communication resources. This problem and the solutions applied to it may be generally described into two ways.
In the first case, there are more communication requests made than can be handled by the limited number of communication resources. This problem is generally addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,735 by Erickson entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR QUEUING RADIO TELEPHONE SERVICE REQUESTS and having the same assignee as the present invention. In the Erickson patent, pending call requests (i.e., call requests that are awaiting the availability of communication resources) are queued. The pending call requests are either serviced once communication resources are available, or they are dropped from the queue if communication resources do not become available within a finite period of time after they have been queued. Although the Erickson patent represents an advance in the art, particularly with regard to the Processing of telephone interconnect calls, no disclosure is made regarding how the allocation of communication resources can be managed such that the possibility of a call being dropped from the queue is minimized.
In the second case, the procedures for the allocation of communication resources fail to recognize those instances in which allocation of a given communication resource may actually restrict the possibilities for further allocation of other communication resources. In current communication systems, once a communication request is received, one or more communication resources are automatically assigned to that request. Generally, the one or more communication resources thus assigned are chosen by scanning a list of possible resources and selecting the first resources found to be available. However, it is possible that the selection of a given resource for a current call request will actually prevent other communication resources from being used in response to future call requests. As a result, the future call requests may be denied. Such inefficiencies have a negative affect on user perceptions regarding access times and system availability. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide resource allocation techniques that minimize the probability of queued calls being dropped and that maximize the efficient assignment of communication resources.